visit
by fall from stars
Summary: ONESHOT—She’s almost always there. .DiegoxMia. Spoilers for AA case 2 and TT case 4!


**A/N: **Ohmigod, I'm alive. That being said, uh. Hi. I was away being owned by school, but I got on the Dean's List so I suppose bitching would be unacceptable. So, in other news, I have a new fandom, say what? And yeah, Diego/Mia is horrendously tragic stuff. I had to write it, 'twould only be appropriate. Even if I'm sure this particular thread has been followed at least 845855747 times before I got there.

For a bunch of people out there who mean the world to me. You know who you are, and you know how you helped make this.

**Spoilers: **_Ace Attorney _case 2, _Trials & Tribulations _case 4. You have been warned!

Feedback of any kind is amazing. Thank you!

**Sleeping people can't fall down.  
—**  
**Japanese proverb  
**

**visit**

She's almost always there.

It's gotten to the point where the nurses on every shift know her name, where the doctors all know to call her in case anything bad happens, where she doesn't even worry about locked doors or visiting hours that have long since finished.

Her time, when she can spare it, is spent here.

People sometimes tell her she has better things to do.

They don't know how wrong they are.

--

The poison that _she _chose for him is one of the most horrible poisons in the world.

The doctors say Diego will be lucky if he'll even see shadows, let alone ever again. All of his hair's gone white now. His heartbeat sometimes goes a little too quiet for comfort, and his nose moves, unnoticeably, with breathing. He's lost so much weight, even with the nurses carefully monitoring his tubes.

He doesn't look like the cocky lawyer who drank his body weight in coffee every day and tore up courtrooms to defend the innocent and went further than most to uncover the truth. He doesn't look like the consistently difficult man who teased her constantly and kissed her in public and called her his kitten.

In fact, Mia thinks, lying in that bed and fighting to live, he doesn't really look like much of anything at all.

On good days, it feels like Dahlia's not much of a threat at all.

That she may yet be convicted for her crimes.

On bad days, it feels like there's nothing left to hope for.

Like the poison's just eaten away at everything.

--

Most of the nurses bite their lips, or frown, or something like that, if they're still in the room when she starts talking to him.

"Honey," they'll say in soft voices, shuffling their muffled shoes and cleaning up nearby pill trays, "it's no use. You know he can't hear you."

Mia's face hardens when she hears this. "You don't know that," she says, weak, strong, all at once. "You're not him. You don't know."

It's no use telling her that the nurses and doctors themselves have tried talking and there has been no response. It's no use telling her that she has other things to focus on, like her trials, like her career, like her future.

Mia's just as stubborn as he was. Back when he was awake.

And there's no changing that.

--

There are days where the words don't come, days where even stubbornness won't draw them out.

She used to be terrified of them. She can't remember how many times she was afraid of facing those silent days.

But she knows how to deal with them now.

She goes to the best cafés in the city and comes back with dark, bitter coffee. It's always the finest, brewed to its blackest, like starless nights.

"I know you like the way it smells best," Mia says, with a fond smile.

She jokes, too, a sign that it's a good day: "Maybe you'll wake up once you figure out how much coffee's going to waste."

The fragrance of dark coffee helps ease the silence.

It smells like Diego, like the nights she spent with him in his favorite cafés. It even smells like the inside of his apartment, and she's reminded of the way that coffee seeped into everything there: the water bottles in the refrigerator, the rarely-used barbecue in the Spartan backyard, even the bed sheets.

Back when she thought they had forever, or at least tomorrow.

Back before she learned that tomorrow's not guaranteed.

--

It's been a while, but even now, Mia won't touch any of the cups she buys for him.

She wouldn't dream of it because she takes her coffee lightly roasted, with tons of sugar and a drop or two of half-and-half.

_Ha! …that's watered down_, Diego would always say. _It's watered down coffee, and it's hardly the real deal. I don't know how you can even stand it, kitten._

"I still go back to all your places, every single one," she informs him for the sixtieth time this month. "They finally recognize me, and I don't even have to be on your arm."

Today is a bad day, though. The joke falls flat in her own mouth, and she chokes back tears. It gets hard when she talks about this, especially on the bad days.

_Don't cry, kitten. You're going to make my coffee all salty_.

"Your baristas, they're all very worried. They ask for you all the time."

_Don't you get it? You can't cry yet._

"They still remember you, Diego."

_The only time a lawyer can cry is when it's all over._

"They want you to come back."

She breathes, strong, controlled.

He breathes, weak, struggling.

For a moment, she wants to switch places.

"We all do."

--

Life moves on. It has a tendency to do that, even when all you want is for everything to stand still.

Trials continue to cycle in and out. She wins some, she loses some. Then, all of a sudden, things change, and she outgrows Grossberg's turf. Things really start changing after she gets her own firm.

_Fey Law Offices & Company._

Five words, and everything's changed.

She realizes she's no kitten anymore. She is a cat, full-grown and with claws ready to strike. She's finally what Diego always knew she'd be. He's nowhere near close to seeing it, but she's too busy to consider that.

After too many interviews to count and way too much stress over picking a potential partner, she picks a name she remembers.

Phoenix Wright.

--

The snotty-nosed loud kid with the pink sweatshirt certainly has come a long way, even if he's still a little on the loud side, Mia thinks.

His first trial actually goes pretty well. Sahwit's easier to break than most, but Phoenix races through the case, uncovering contradictions better than Mia could ever hope for. She's all too happy to report that back to Diego.

But it's not all cheers and confetti in the courtroom. It never really is, though she wishes it was.

Lately, it's been bad day after bad day. It's gotten really hard lately, and she thinks she's almost gotten away with it.

But she can't lie to him. She never was able to. And even now with him asleep and unaware of the world around him, even without the smile that makes her weak in the knees, she can't lie to him now.

"I'm in trouble, Diego," she admits.

In whispers when the nurses are gone, she tells him about Bluecorp. She tells him about Redd White and his eyes and ears, the anything-but-darling April May. She tells him why they're after her, just what she's done to paint a target on her forehead.

"You don't need to worry, though," she insists, trying to fool him, trying to fool herself. "You know I'll be fine. I'm not going to turn into one of his tools."

She laughs. It's hard to hear it ring true when it's anything but.

"I'll bare my claws. Just like you taught me."

Suddenly. His hand moves, ever so slightly, near hers.

It's enough to make her cry.

But it's not over, and she can't cry. Not yet.

But even then, the kiss she plants on his clammy, unresponsive lips is too heavy, too final.

If he was awake, he'd be able to see right through her. But he's not, and her lie, weak as it is, still stands.

"_Adiós, mi amor_," she whispers.

She slowly, agonizingly lets go, until her fingers finally let go of his.

And she's gone.

--

Death, the afterlife, is strange. She visited it often to call upon people, but she never once imagined what it would be like. It's incessantly foggy, and difficult to decipher what's ahead.

It's so very loud. She almost can't hear herself think.

There are just so many voices calling out for mothers, fathers, lovers, siblings. Calling out for anyone that they loved when they were alive.

She is lucky because she finds many people she knows. But she doesn't find him.

He is not in the ranks of the dead, and must still be in the land of the living.

She thinks that she will not be able to move back to the world she knows, back to the land of the living. Not without Maya's help.

She cannot call on her sister to bring her back. It's the other way around, and she was sure it was doomed to stay that way.

Until the dream.

--

Diego's apartment is the same as always. It has been unchanged since he has woken up: maybe one of the only things that's stayed true to his memory. The bedcovers are still a mess, the papers are still disorganized, and the bookcase is still a maze nobody dares to touch.

She thinks that there's only one thing different: a sterile feel to the air, the lingering feel of detergent under her tongue. The coffee scent lingers, but it's not as strong as it used to be.

Mia knows why. Modern medicine and coffee came together to wake him up.

Neither one on its own could. Both revived him, and now, they both keep him alive.

But then she sees the things, the things that have really changed, and realizes how wrong her first impression was.

There's a strange visor, almost robot-like, over the place where his eyes used to be. Between the sterile steel the lasers glow, unwavering, stoic, bright red. It is a color so unlike him that she can hardly stand it.

And there's something else, a strange name on the papers he's writing_: Godot_.

She remembers it from a play she read, long ago in high school. Godot was a man who was supposed to come, and with his arrival, save two men.

Godot was a savior who never came.

A savior who didn't exist.

There are textbooks piled high around him, coffee cups of glass and Styrofoam littering the floor. Practice exams are scattered all over, many of them without passing grades. The incorrect answers are circled in green.

She knows his aim, suddenly, in that instant.

He's going to become something she never imagined he would.

A prosecutor.

"_Diego_—!"

But he does not hear her.

And just as quickly as it came, the dream—the vision, the prediction, whatever it is—vanishes.

And she can't stop the tears this time.

--

She's almost always there.

Except when she can't bear to be.

--


End file.
